(IAS PLANNER) Choosing Civil Services as a Career

The Indian Civil Service carries great respect and responsibilities. India's best brains vie for entry into the Indian Civil Services as officers. Even though corporate jobs may offer the best of salaries and perks, a majority of youngsters and their parents still crave entry to the prestigious Indian Civil Services. The very fact that a big share of every year's top posts in the civil services exams are bagged by professionals from various streams, shows that the IAS is still the dream job for many.

The booming private sector with rising salaries of corporates is no match to the civil services when it comes to the first career for the youth. A comparison of the public and private sector emoluments in India reveals that the private sector salaries are about two to three times that of the public sector. In fact, in certain categories, the salary differential is very large. For instance, the chief executive of a private sector bank gets a salary five times larger than that of the Secretary of the Government of India. With multinationals coming into the country, these differentials have greatly widened. It is interesting to note that a management graduate from a premier management institute of India is offered in the very first year a salary two to three times higher compared to the salary of the Cabinet Secretary, the highest civil service post in the country, drawn at the far end of his career.

Although it is true it doesn’t offer perks as other sectors are offering but it offers a tremendous opportunity for leadership and to work at the grassroots level. It gives you an opportunity to work in a backward region where even a little work you do has a tremendous impact on the people here. You also get a chance to impact people's lives across a variety of domains such as health, education, water, sanitation, roads and electricity. It is easy for a civil servant to change lives, hundreds of lives a day, an entire village with no access to water is saved by one decision of the IAS officer to sanction a scheme to provide water. You cannot have such kind of privilege in the private sector jobs. As a civil servant all your necessities are provided for and you don’t have to worry about housing bills and your children will get admitted to the best schools that even rich businessmen’s children don’t get.

The members, recruited after a fair and competitive examination (much like our JEE), undergo an intensive training in revenue management, legal procedure, and community administration. It is a formidable institution, with excellent service conditions. Its members control virtually all levers of administrative power; enjoy high remuneration (the best in the government sector), immense prestige and status. However, the debate on whether the civil services should be a career option for young people today is marred by a myopic view of the opportunities it provides for career advancement, for a fulfilling life, and the capacity to carry out the benevolent functions that were once associated with it. It is true the debate is on and will go long; we are here to discuss the nature of job and as a career of civil services. In my view, it is all meaningless to blame perceived nature of the job. Besides, the vast array of sectors that a civil servant handles is unmatched by any other in our society.

Further, the civil service is not merely the preserve of the `generalist'(only some bunch of people). Governance today is a complex matter. In any case, civil servants are not only responsible for maintaining law and order or collecting revenue, they also head scientific and technical departments. The expansion in the duties of the government, more so since the independence, makes it imperative that the civil services are manned by people with caliber. After all, the standard of administration depends on the people appointed to these very responsible posts. It might even be said that it is the duty of talented young persons to serve the country.

It is true that rather than a service motive, some show a preference for the civil service charmed by the flashing red light on the official white ambassador cars, some might even think of it as a haven for the indolent and the status quoist, and thus wish to be a part of it. Yet it is also a place for the dedicated workaholic, the reformer, the man of ideas, the man who wants to replace red-tape with flexibility and initiative. It is not fair to assume that individual motivations to opt for the civil services are always malevolent. There are several examples of civil servants who valiantly crossed seemingly insurmountable hurdles, sometimes at a great cost to their personal lives, and contributed to social development or sought to clean up the system.

Civil servants work in various capacities as legal representatives of the government, implementing programmes of the popularly elected governments as heads of district administration to jobs at the United Nations and the World Bank, formulating policies which touch the lives of millions of people across the globe. So far, no civil servant has complained that he `wasted' his time while in service, whatever other misgivings he might have.